Tax bills

Like thousands of other El Pasoans, I finally received word of my new property tax assessment. The breakdown for 2017 and 2018 looks like this:

Taxing entity 2017 2018 % change

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CITY OF EL PASO 0.803433 0.843332 +4.97%

EL PASO COUNTY 0.452694 0.447819 -1.09%

EL PASO I.S.D. 1.310000 1.310000 0

EPCC 0.141638 0.140273 -0.97%

UNIV MED CTR 0.251943 0.251943 0

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TOTAL TAX RATE 2.959708% 2.993367% +1.14%

Thus, the City of El Paso was the only taxing entity to raise our taxes, and they did so by almost 5%. Moreover, in the last six years the City of El Paso has raised our taxes from $0.66 per $100 valuation to $0.8433, an increase of 27%! Yes, we have actually joined the “3% Club” with Detroit!

For 2018, the value of my home was assessed 16.15% higher, but then my attorney sued to lower that increase to only 7.69%, which is still huge. Between that and my fleecing at the hands of the City, my property taxes are $684.46 higher for the coming year. That is money that I will not spend in the local economy, hurting local businesses and pressuring wages.

Our Mayor, who had promised to hold the line on taxes, and our City Council are 100% responsible for the tax hike, which is a direct result of their reckless borrowing and spending, their inability to contain our debt, their failure to respect established budgets, and their insistence upon increasing the cost of the already-bloated QOL bond projects, especially their “Arena,” by issuing new debt that was never approved by the voters.

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We invite our readers to tell us what happened to their tax bills this year.

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15 Responses to Tax bills

I think the problem was that Beto’s race brought out a lot of college kids who voted for stuff (and people) they won’t have to pay for. The only thing worse than no vote is a mob of single candidate voters making a bunch of uninformed decisions on the rest of the ballot. Someday when they try to buy a house and can’t qualify for a mortgage because the tax bill doubles their payment, they’ll figure out why voting for tax and spenders is a bad idea, but in the meantime they are a rubber stamp for this stupidity.

Or the fact that the runoff against tax and spender Cissy in District 8 will now be against another inexperienced youngster who just wants to spend differently. Reformer Rich Wright was cut out of that spot by 15 votes when they “counted” absentee ballots.

Leaving El Paso for lower taxes. Basically, if I retired tomorrow, I would be renting my paid-for home from the city. Not only that, they increase the “rent” every year and if I don’t like it they have people with guns who will make sure I pay or take the property away from me. Not sure this is what anyone signed up for, but it is sure what they got. Sold my home to some unsuspecting family who thinks local politicians really have their best interests at heart. New Mexico taxes are very reasonable, at least at the moment, and it would take several decades to reach El Paso proportions. Good riddance to ever-increasing taxes while actual services/service quality decrease. Only government can force you to pay more for less, then pay for billboards touting their “success”. El Paso Forward? To what, higher taxes? Politicians should be barred from using tax dollars to pat themselves on the back, especially when there is no evidence that El Paso is moving towards anything but unsustainable debt.

1. Trolleys? Who needed these? Tremendous annual expense with no real community benefit.
2. Three Brio lines for year-over-year declining bus ridership. They just knew everyone wanted to get rid of their cars if only there were more buses. Tremendous annual expense with no real community benefit.
3. New, bigger libraries in a time when the internet offers immediate access to information. I guess this helps with homeless housing and restroom needs. Tremendous annual expense with no real community benefit.
4. Children’s museum that nobody demanded, but will cost as much or more than the baseball stadium.
5. Focus on downtown municipal spending that really only benefits the wealthiest people in town.
6. Quality of Life spending that doesn’t seem to have improved the quality of life of anyone I know. Ask around and see if it has for anyone you know.

The list literally goes on. The wasteful spending in El Paso is almost as ridiculous as the number of people who vote to allow it.

The baseball stadium was supposed to be a 50 million dollar project. It turned into a 78 million dollar project and so far with the other costs involved of relocating City Hall we have spent approximately 131 million dollars.

It is not something that I look forward to at all to see the 180 million dollar Arena project which has already turned into a 250 million dollar project become a project that costs us between 400 and 500 million dollars. This is what will happen. Mark my words. And it will be a very heavy Stone around our Collective necks for decades. Who is going to want to move to El Paso on under these circumstances?

It will be more difficult to attract businesses. It will be more difficult to keep businesses that are already here. It will even be more difficult to keep our students here and prevent the brain drain after we have spent countless hundreds of millions of dollars providing for their education. When is this bleeding going to stop? We just had an opportunity to change the way our city government works by electing people who were not bought and paid for. In two of those districts the same old Foster and Hunt backed candidates won. Two more districts are going to a runoff election. Pull your heads out of that deep dark crevice between the cheeks of your butt westsiders. Vote for anybody but incumbents.

Since I no longer have the ability to deduct property taxes on my federal return (don’t have enough in other deductions to exceed the higher standard deduction) and do have the over 65 exemption that allows me to pay quarterly through most of next year with no extra cost, I can at least slow pay our tax and spenders. But that doesn’t take away the fact that at my current tax rate I literally pay the full purchase price of my house every 28 years. When I first moved here it would have taken 45 years to pay enough in taxes to equal the purchase price of my house. I’ve done two appeals and won both. I haven’t seen a house on my cul-de-sac sell for CAD value in a decade and the realtors in my area tell me property values in our older neighborhood have been dropping over the last six months. They were appreciating prior to that. Come January I expect to see another bunch of for sale and foreclosure signs — that is also becoming a trend around here because the property tax bill is the last straw for some folks.

Another reason to NOT own a large house or the largest house in an area, even though a person can afford the mortgage payments AT THE TIME they are getting a home loan.
During the course of a mortgage, your property taxes will go up as much as the entire monthly payment over 20-30 years.
(Even though your income may not have really gone up.)

Many homes in el paso have been lost to the mortgage companies ONLY because the property taxes have gone up so much.

A person QUALIFIES for a $1000. per month payment and in a few years, it is $1100., then $1200, then $1300, then $1400. per month.
When the borrower DID NOT agree to that AT ALL and cannot sustain those monthly payments, due to no fault of their own.
As well as. . . . the mortgage company DID NOT agree to that either.

Due to homeowner safety and security, and the reason above, property taxes should be fixed at whatever the home buyer bought the home for.
Each NEW buyer would assume a NEW property tax, or reevaluation, when they buy a home.
Someone needs to SUE to get this done.
The State of Texas needs to pass a law to protect homeowners !

The CITY of El Paso has CAUSED financial damage to homeowners and many times loss of their entire estate and caused many to become homeless.

The city needs new ways to get more money. It will just continue like this until they are forced to file bankruptcy. The Cook administration, along with Niles, Ortega and Byrd, have saddled El Paso with a massive amount of debt thatdoes nothing to improve the lives of our citizens. Unless you consider higher taxes a benefit. Wait and see what the arena actually costs, and who they give it to…